Strandloper

by Alan Garner

  Murrangurk stood above the dead animal. It was a sheep. The crows had taken the soft parts first and were working the insides. They had just begun on the meat under the wool, and so Murrangurk could see the spear hole above the heart. But none had been taken by the hunter.

  It was the same wherever he went. Young and old, tups, ewes and lambs, had all been killed and left. There were more than he could count.

  Murrangurk walked among the corpses across the plain, and every crow warned him not to go further, yet he had to. In front of him the plain became a low ridge, and beyond that he smelt another, and a different, death.

  He stood on the ridge. The land fell away towards the Place of Growing. There were more bodies of sheep, but from the branches of every tree hung men, tied by their hair, and no crows were on them.

  Murrangurk painted his face white before he went to the trees. He looked up at the first man. They were all warriors of the Beingalite, and they had been shot. He saw his nephews and his grandsons and his sons, the young men whose Dreamings he had led, whose ways he had taught, the young men he had held at their Smoking. But it was not their bodies he saw, but their skins only. The meat and bones had been taken out, and grass had been stuffed into them. It hung from their eyes, their noses, their mouths, and all around him Murrangurk heard the cry of their trapped spirits. There was an elder among them. It was Derrimut.

  Murrangurk climbed each tree and untied the hair, and, gentle, lowered the skin to the ground. Then he gathered them, as many as he could lift, and carried them to the Place of Growing and piled them between the Clashing Rock and the water of the Spirit Hole, and went back to bring more; back and forth, until all were together. Then he took a wangim and went to where the crows were feeding, and he killed a crow, for the Beingalite were of the Crow flesh. He put the bones of the crow with the skins of the warriors, to be the bones of them all.

  He danced the Crow, and he danced the Evening Star, which calls the warriors home. Then he blew a fire heap, and put it to the skins; and while they burned he sat and sang to them. He sang of the Beginning, of the Ancestors, and their Dreaming of all that was and is; he sang to lift them to the sky for the track to Tharangalkbek, and the songs of Life and of Death that had come to him from Neeyangarra he sang also. And when he had sung, Murrangurk danced the strength that had been theirs back to the earth, so that it would not go with them. He danced until bone and skin were dust; then he took the dust and spread it on the water of the Spirit Hole, and the warriors were put back into the circle of Being to begin the new step of their Dance. So all was done.

  Murrangurk picked up his shield and his weapons and walked in the purple light and the rising moon to where the fires of the People were.

  They came out to meet him: Nullamboin, Koronn his wife and Purranmurnin Tallarwurnin. They sat, facing him, and Murrangurk howled, and tore at the grass and flung earth over himself and fell backwards as if dead.

  The others went to him and raised him. He stood, and they held him and set him by the fires, and Purranmurnin Tallarwurnin brought him water to drink, and cleansed his body and his spirit with leaves of bwal, and sang him back to her.

  “What has happened?” said Murrangurk, looking at them. “Why are you so horrible to see?”

  Nullamboin was dressed as a white man. He wore a hat, a shirt, flannel jacket and breeches. Koronn wore a dress of dyed cotton, and Purranmurnin Tallarwurnin a dress striped green and blue.

  “They say that we are animals,” said Nullamboin, “and will not feed us. They make us put on these things that hurt.”

  “Kah!” said Murrangurk.

  “The animals with white hair kill all the land. The dead men say that they must have the land. They will not let the warriors hunt.”

  “The dead men will not let the women gather roots and berries and the small meat,” said Koronn. “There are only children and elders now.”

  “Where are the young women and their Dreaming?” said Murrangurk.

  “The dead men take them,” said Koronn. “And when they have finished, they kill them, or cut their teats and turn them loose.”

  Nullamboin stood. He took off his hat and threw it onto the fire and put kowir and plover in his hair. He painted his face red, and white and black. The elders gathered. “I sing,” said Nullamboin; “for it is a time to die.”

  And Nullamboin sang.

  “There is a mulla-mullung. He is white and he is mad. I look into him and see no Ancestor, no Mami-ngata; nothing is his flesh, he has no Dreaming.”

  “No Dreaming!”

  “He talks to the air, and says it is a spirit. I see no spirit.”

  “No spirit!”

  “He says the spirit will feed us if we say that it is good and that we are bad.”

  “Are bad!”

  “He says that, if we do not, the spirit will be angry and will hold firesticks against our skins for ever.”

  “For ever!”

  “He says that we must eat the spirit. We must not blacken our mouths.”

  “Our mouths!”

  “He does not blacken his mouth; but he says that what he drinks is its blood.”

  “Its blood!”

  “He says that it gives him power.”

  “Him power!”

  “He says that, when he does wrong, and drinks the blood, he is forgiven; and when he does wrong again, he drinks again.”

  “Drinks again!”

  “And, if he drinks, he will live for ever.”

  “For ever!”

  “Now an elder, Kal cousin of Murrangurk, dreams to be mulla-mullung. He dreams to take this power and to live for ever; and he finds the blood of the spirit in a bowl.”

  “A bowl!”

  “A round bowl of black flint, closed with wood: so. And the elder takes the bowl, and drinks; and he is mad.”

  “Is mad!”

  “He gives the blood to the warriors, to them all; and all are mad.”

  “Are mad!”

  “They make war on the animals that eat the land, and kill them.”

  “Kill them!”

  “But the blood that they drink does not save them, and the dead men kill the warriors and the elder, and will not let us take them to their places of birth blood.”

  “Birth blood!”

  “They steal the skin from them and hang it on trees, and the bones and meat they give to kal.”

  “To kal!”

  “I hear the warriors weeping.”

  “Weeping!”

  “Now the Beingalite will pass. For we are elders, and shall be gone before the children can be led into the ways of their Dreaming. The sky has fallen. My song has ended. The Dance is dead.”

  29

  MURRANGURK DANCED THE Morning Star.

  “Why do you dance?” said Nullamboin. “Have you not heard me?”

  “Why do you ask?” said Murrangurk. “‘The grass of your head is white.’”

  Nullamboin laughed. “But yours is the whiter.”

  They sat by the fire.

  “My song was poor last night.”

  “New songs must be sung until they are smooth,” said Murrangurk.

  “And it is hard for a man to sing when his balls are not loose.”

  “Kah,” said Nullamboin.

  “But you did sing strong when you sang me. Now it is my singing.”

  “There is a dream that I have not told you,” said Nullamboin. “It was the dream before I sang, so long ago. You dance in a forest of brown wood. Your step is with the voice of Tundun. You dance into silence. The silence and the song are all and one. What does it mean?”

  “It sings true,” said Murrangurk. “It is the dream of a warrior.”

  “We are warriors,” said Nullamboin. “I tell you this. The dead men kill us, take our bodies, take the land. Now they would take the sacred; but we fight. They will build fires in the place beyond Kooraioo. They will be big fires that will not move. And they build them so that more and more and more of their animals
can come; and they ask me the name of the place beyond Kooraioo, so that the people with broken spirit who serve them will know where to come. We cannot save the place beyond Kooraioo, but we can send its name into the Dreaming. ‘What name, old man,’ say the dead men, ‘is it called, so that the people may know it?’ I think swift. ‘Its name,’ I say to them, ‘is Pissflaps.’ ‘Pissflaps,’ say the dead men. ‘It will be a mighty fire for ever.’”

  Nullamboin and Murrangurk cried with laughter.

  “Oh, uncle, you sing strong! Dead men cannot win!”

  They stood. Murrangurk looked into Nullamboin. Nullamboin welcomed him.

  Owd Cob and Young Cob

  And Young Cob’s son;

  Young Cob’s Owd Cob

  When Owd Cob’s done.

  Nullamboin knew.

  Now I must sing, said Murrangurk. They grasped the shoulders and spoke into the eyes. Dance well. They shall not take the Dreaming.

  Murrangurk turned, and walked away, and did not look back.

  “Pissflaps!” shouted Nullamboin.

  “Pissflaps, uncle!”

  He went to his fire and held Purranmurnin Tallarwurnin’s hands, and held them. The bones were quiet, the bones of a bird.

  They sat, and remembered.

  Go now, she said. We are one Dreaming.

  We are one Dreaming.

  He left, and did not look back.

  Murrangurk went to the grave with the two trees. The bark had covered the edges of the spirit lines cut into the wood, but he read their ways.

  At the Place of Growing, he painted his body red and yellow, and put four curved lines of white across his chest to show the combs of his Bee flesh. He took kowir and plover and the feather of an eagle’s wing, painted his headband yellow, and across it, in red, the solemn path of the snake, and marked its fires with a dot in the curve of each bend, and set the feathers there. He put a koim bone through his nose in place of a reed, and tied bwal about his arms and around his ankles. Then he sat in turn before the Clashing Rock and before the Tree, and sang them into him. He faced the Spirit Hole.

  First he danced the Kal, and then the Crow. He danced the Kowir. He danced Thuroongarong. Then he danced the Eagle. And then he sang again.

  He sang his Dreaming, and he sang the songs of Neeyangarra, to the clap of wangim, he sang all the songs of Neeyangarra, which had never been sung; and he sang the feathers of the Eagle onto his arms. He sang the solemn way of the Snake, and then he sang the Rainbow.

  The waters of the Spirit Hole bubbled, and Murrangurk sang harder and clapped faster, until he sang songs he did not know that came to him from the waters; and out of the Spirit Hole was the plumed head of Binbeal, the Rainbow, and it lifted into the sky, drawing the body upwards, and arched over and down upon Murrangurk, who rose on his eagle feathers to meet him; and Binbeal opened his mouth and swallowed.

  Murrangurk flew into the throat. It was not dark, but full of yellow stars, the Five Points of Time, and their lines made the five sides of the comb of Thuroongarong at the heart; and light, and all around him the veins were the pattern of his spirit upon the trees, and they began to turn about him, and to change.

  They straightened into lines that were the net of the burying of the head, the track of Death and Life, and then they moved and were the four-pointed heads of the children of Binbeal who had carried Murrangurk inside the Tree. The heads joined, to four-sided Dreamings, and, in the middle of each, though still a net, were the flowers of coraminga, and torumba; nardoo, goborro, mulkathandra, bolwarra; mara, karagata, dargan and other flowers that he knew but could not name.

  Bees fed from the flowers, and took their sweetness to everlasting life, and their wings were the voice of Tundun.

  Murrangurk flew the gullet of Binbeal, and the lines of Dreaming were the joined combs of Thuroongarong, and then on to the Six Points of Time, joined as combs; and bees fed.

  The flowers and the wings faded, but the voice remained. Murrangurk was carried through the turning rainbow. Ahead of him the way led into the paths of a churinga of crystal; and he traced its paths, and each path brought him knowledge, to the great spiral at its centre. He was carried round and in, until, at the end, was the circle of Being, and into this he sank, and through it, to the Ninth Point of Time, beyond where there is no other known among the People.

  He was in the sky, under the stars, and before him, on a block of crystal, Bunjil sat, his white beard flowing over him, and, on each shoulder, a thundal went up to the sky, and Murrangurk could not see their end.

  Grandfather, said Murrangurk. I have come to take the Dreaming to where it may be safe and not die.

  I know why you have come, said Bunjil. You shall take the Dreaming, and the Dreaming of All. But first you shall take a new name; for your song is almost sung, but your next Dreaming is new. Your Dreaming is ever to walk the boundaries, to be the master of them, and to guide the Dreaming in all Time. For that you must have a new name that none may speak. And it is this.

  Bunjil gave Murrangurk a name beyond thought.

  Yes, Grandfather.

  The Dreaming shall not die, and it shall not be disgraced, said Bunjil. I take it from what is Now; and those who live there only will not know it and will think it dead. And you shall take it to where your step in the Dance began, and there you shall leave the Dreaming. For it is yours to take, but not to sing. That is your way. The Dreaming will wait until another singer comes, because of you, and he will travel as you have travelled, but he will sing in another Time.

  And you, who have travelled far, shall travel further, to the churinga of your new Dreaming, your new Time, your new Song.

  If that is my way, that is my way, said Murrangurk.

  It was not by chance that you were sung, for chance is but a little dream, said Bunjil. We are the bees of the invisible. We gather the honey of the invisible and store it in the great, yellow hive of the visible, for everlasting life.

  Take the Dreaming.

  Bunjil held out to Murrangurk a crystal.

  It is the Murrawun, the father of spearthrowers!

  And it is the Dreaming, said Bunjil.

  Murrangurk reached out and took the crystal; and fell into light.

  He was beside the Spirit Hole. The feathers of his arms lay around him. He held a bag of wolard skin. He opened it, and saw what was inside.

  It was a wooden spearthrower, with its peg fixed in gum. Around the neck of the handle was bound string of wolard hair. And all was painted red, with three bands of white above, and three below, the neck and four above the peg. It was a spearthrower of reckoning, used by the featherfoot men alone.

  Murrangurk laughed with Bunjil, and their laughter filled Earth and Time. “Oh, Pissflaps!”

  V

  STRANDLOPER

  We all go to the bones

  all of them shining white in this Dulur country.

  The noise of our father Bunjil

  rushing down singing in this heart of mine

  Berak.

  30

  NIGGY BOWER WAS on the turnpike.

  “Now then, Bricky. It’s been a while.”

  “Yay, but it has,” said William.

  “How art? And how’ve you bin?” said Niggy.

  “Oh, all agait a-going, tha knows,” said William.

  “Anyroad, it’s good to see thee,” said Niggy.

  “And thee,” said William. “Where shall I find Het?”

  “She went living Chorley way,” said Niggy. “Up th’ Hough.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers. Be good, youth.”

  “Be good, Niggy.”

  He had to get to the oak. He put his face against the bark and looked up at the too brilliant leaves. But he heard its song, and was comforted. He went to the Hamestan and ran his fingers along the smoothed top. The tree and the rock were the same. He went to drink at the mere.

  The mere. Where was it? He was staring at a hollow field.

 
“Hey!”

  Niggy was across the field, on the turnpike.

  “What’s up, Bricky?”

  “Where’s mere?”

  “Mere? It inner! That’s where! We drained yon, years back! For taters!”

  “You daft sods! You’ve buggered Spirit Hole!”

  “Oh, ay? Be seeing you, Bricky!”

  Niggy went his way. William turned back up the lane. A lurcher came out of the hedge and walked at his heel.

  Now then, Gyp.

  He came to the farm, and stopped at the gate. He could smell many bodies, and, from inside, he heard a chanting. He listened.

  “B. Better is solid virtue than riches in learning.”

  Tap.

  “D. Determination overcomes great difficulties.”

  Tap.

  “K. Kindly excuse the shortcomings of others.”

  Tap. It was the signal that featherfoot men were passing by, but the voices were the voices of children.

  “M. Make use of time to secure eternal happiness.”

  Tap.

  “O. Overcome your passions and evil inclinations.”

  Tap.

  “P. Prayer calms the mind and strengthens the soul.”

  Tap.

  William opened the door. There were ten children sitting on forms in the kitchen, with slates and pencils on their knees. They were facing a blackboard where the sideboard used to be, with lines of writing on it. A man stood with a stick in his hand. A desk was in the place of Grandad’s chair by the fire, which was as William remembered it, but the fire was not lit.

  The man looked William up and down.

  “Yes, my good fellow? May I be of assistance?”

  The man could not have led warriors.

  “I was living here,” said William. “As a lad. That’s all. When it were a farm.”